Just another day at Wrigley Field: Joe Maddon compares Javier Báez to Manny Ramirez instead of Willie Mays. Jon Lester takes a no-hitter into the fifth inning and it barely registers. The Cubs play small ball and throttle the St. Louis Cardinals.

Maddon sounded like he was workshopping his next T-shirt idea when he sat down in the interview room after watching the Cubs get 14 hits during Thursday afternoon’s 8-5 win over the Cardinals.

After seeing too much inconsistency while scoring 800-plus last season, and watching too many noncompetitive at-bats against the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers during the playoffs, the Cubs overhauled their hitting program with sweeping changes that brought back, um, almost exactly the same group of hitters.

Statcast is out, Chili Davis is in. Or at least some of the talking points are changing, because the...